We're going to have to find a replacement for him.'
'I know,' Wilma said. 'I just… don't want to start thinking about it right now.'
Megan put an arm around Wilma and hugged her briefly. 'Look, it's going to work out,' she said. 'You should get back out into real life and check in with your folks.'
'Yeah,' Wilma said. She sagged briefly, but then she sat straighter. 'Megan… listen. Thanks. Really, thanks. I know I've been hopeless, the last few days… but just knowing that he's alive and somewhere safe…'
'It makes a big difference,' Megan said. 'Yes.'
'I should go… '
'Me, too.' Megan patted Wilma on the shoulder, got up, and turned. 'Door..
' 'Door' what?'
'Door, please, Uncle Doug,' Megan said, with a wry look. She glanced back at Wilma. 'Why is your space manager so snotty?'
'Minimum wage,' said 'Uncle Doug,' before Wilma could even open her mouth.
Wilma chuckled. 'He was like that,' she said. 'I like to keep 'him' with me.'
It occurred to Megan that Wilma might have done too good a job with this. But then, she had also done something similar with Burt, who wasn't that easy to hang around with all the time either. Love is weird, Megan thought, resigned. Or is it love… or just habit, the tendency to want to prolong what you're used to…?
She waved and headed out her door.
Chapter 4
On Sunday morning Megan woke up late with a strong feeling of having forgotten something, or missed something, something important. She lay there staring at the sun coming in her window slantwise and glinting off the Miro print on the wall by the window, setting the framed design afire in brilliant crimsons and blues, and tried to think what she might have forgotten. She couldn't come up with anything, except that she should really move the print before it started to fade.
From outside she could hear a confused mutter of voices coming from the kitchen. The usual discussions about the logistics of breakfast, Megan suspected. She got up, went on down to the bathroom and spent a short time making herself feel human, and then went to see about some breakfast for herself.
The kitchen was mercifully free of brothers. Mike's whereabouts were unknown, and Sean had decamped into the den to use the Net chair there. Megan went to the cupboard above and left of the sink and started rooting around for her favorite brand of muesli, and discovered, not at all to her surprise, that it was (as usual) gone before she had ever had a chance to get at it. She was unable to find any cereal at all except something called Choco- Hoots, and even that box had barely a bowlful left in it. Megan shook it disbelievingly, popped the package top open, sniffed it, shook it. There seemed to be nothing inside but sugar, something masquerading as chocolate, and some anonymous sort of crunch. 'How do they get so big eating food like this?' she muttered.
'Has to be good genes,' her mother said from the table, where she was sitting back in front of a spread-out NewSheet readout, over which the Sunday editorial 'pages' were streaming. She pushed up the sleeves of her bathrobe, tapped at the readout to pause it, looked at it with an expression that suggested some editorial writer's work needed a critique, and began folding the readout up. 'So, listen, honey, did you see Burt?'
'Uh, yeah.' Meg turned away and opened one of the upper cupboards over the counter by the sink, in search, of a mug for her tea.
'So how was he?'
'He seemed okay.' She found the mug, and then a tea- bag full of the green tea with toasted rice that she favored.
'That tone of voice has 'disclaimer' written all over it,' Megan's mother said as Megan went to get the kettle off the stove.
Megan made her tea, then went to sit down with her mother. 'Yeah,' she said.
'So what was the matter?'
'Oh… Well, just Burt, to start with,' Megan said. 'Mom, you ever have a personality conflict with someone? The kind you couldn't explain rationally?'
Her mother rolled her eyes. 'Lately it seems to be the story of my life.'
'Well, I've got something like that with Burt. Just… a clash of styles, I guess.'
Her mother shrugged. 'It happens, honey. Never mind that. He's well? He's safe?'
'Yeah.'
'That's the important thing. When's he coming home?'
'I think maybe he's not.'
Her mother looked concerned. 'Mom, it might be better if he didn't,' Megan said, 'if he's being truthful about the way they treat him… and I think he is.'
'But what will he do? It's not like he's going to find a job that's going to be worth anything… '
'I know,' Megan said, and went off down the hall with her mug, thinking hard. She went into the bathroom, shut the door, started to fill the tub, and tried to think. An hour later, as she came out again, barefoot and once more in jeans and T-shirt, she was no further along toward working out what was troubling her.
She met her dad in the hallway, coming out of his office, also in his bathrobe and looking a little weary around the edges. 'Were you up late?' Megan said, for he hadn't shaved.
'Yeah…'
'Done with the machine for a while?'
'Sure, honey, go ahead… '
She slipped into the office and once again carefully removed the stack of books that her father had left in front of the implant, pausing as she set aside the stack to look at the title on the spine of the book on top. The Gentleman's Art: 'Fiore de LiherV and Other Swordsmasters' Instruction Manuals of Fifteenth-Century Italy. And right underneath it, something called War in 2000. Megan wondered once again what her father was working on, and which war he was thinking about… But her father tended to be secretive about these things until he was finished outlining a project. There was probably no point in asking him.
She flopped into the chair, lined up her implant, and blinked the world away. A moment later Megan was standing in the amphitheater again, and she made her way down to her desk. The same virtmails were hanging there in the air around it, but she had no interest in them for the moment, except to notice that there wasn't anything new from Wilma. If she's smart, Megan thought, she's catching up on her sleep. She's had a pretty awful couple of days…
'Space manager,' Megan said.
'Here, Megan.'
She took a long thoughtful breath. 'Link to the Breathing Space address accessed via Wilma's Net server yesterday.'
'Done.'
'Is the party referenced in the link available?'
'Checking.'
There was a brief silence, and Megan looked at Saturn, rising now for the fourth time that day, and watched the rings slide up through the warming methane mist. 'The party is flagged available,' said her workspace manager.
'Open an access door,' Megan said, and walked out into the middle of the space.
Her doorframe appeared, and the door in it winked out, showing her that Rocky Mountain view again. Megan stepped through and glanced around her. The 'place' wasn't exactly in phase with the Rockies, apparently. It seemed to be late in some long afternoon, and the shadow of every tree lay out long across the little hills in front of her.
Megan looked around her, but didn't see Burt anywhere; so for the moment she just strolled down across the short golden grass of the small hill on which she had arrived, confident that the system would guide him to her. She was interested to see that the landscape was not as empty as it had been before. On nearby hillsides, and in the
